I’m about to change your life

Spiders are repelled by chestnuts. They think that they’re another nest, or something to that effect, and it keeps the creepy-crawly intruders away. You can thank me later.

Last fall, I gathered as many chestnuts as I could fit into my coat pockets, bringing home handfuls each day. I lined the garage, the living room, the bedrooms, with chestnuts like autumnal salt lines to ward off the eight-legged demons that threatened to haunt my every waking moment. The chestnuts shrivelled with time, but the arachnids, for the most part, went back to the holes from whence they came. We had a shaky peace, the spiders and I.

This fall, I am too late.

There’s a spider under my bed. I saw it skitter into the shadows of the years of hoarded junk that I can never be bothered to organize. I could not find it to kill it.

This was three days ago. I’m still sleeping on the couch in the next room. The spider has not shown its eight-eyed face.